


Robin Wings

by firefright



Series: Chance to Fly [1]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Cute, Fluff, Gen, Jason Todd is Robin, M/M, Past Character Death, Teen Crush, Time Skips, Underage Drinking, Underage Kissing, Wingfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-03
Updated: 2017-05-28
Packaged: 2018-08-28 15:28:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8451748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firefright/pseuds/firefright
Summary: On a weekend visit to the Titans, Jason comes to Roy with an unusual request. His wings are a mess, and with Dick otherwise occupied there's no one else he can turn to for help cleaning them. Or at the very least, no one else he wants to ask for help.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! So in addition to this week featuring the date for my DCU bang to be posted, it's also the start of JayRoy week over on tumblr! I've written two pieces for this week, today's is for the Day 1 prompt, 'Robin Jason', and I figured, hey, why not double down on the robin theme? So here's some wingfic for you all, because wings are awesome XD There's also a good chance I'll write a second part to this someday because I have _ideas_.
> 
> The next piece is for the day 7 prompt, which is Wednesday. After that I'll be back to my usual Sunday upload schedule.
> 
> Enjoy!

“Hey, Speedy?”

It’s late, half past eleven at night to be precise, when Roy turns his head away from the TV to identify the owner of the hesitant voice addressing him: Jason Todd, the new Robin and Dick’s little brother, who he’d brought with him to meet the rest of the team at Titan’s Tower this weekend.

Well, this wasn’t something he was expecting tonight. Jason’s appearance automatically prompts Roy to look for the familiar shape of Nightwing behind him, and he’s somewhat surprised to realise that Dick’s nowhere in sight, which - considering how protective he’s been about Jason so far during his visit - rings a little weird.

“Uh, hi kid.” Roy says, hurriedly putting his beer down in an effort to not to look like a complete teenage layabout in front of what counts as an impressionable youth in their line of work; a difficult feat considering how far down he’s managed to sink into the couch cushions during the last hour. “What’s up?”

It had been a surprise to everyone when Dick showed up at the tower with Jason tucked under the shadow of his wings on Friday evening, without word or warning to anyone (not even Kory) that he was bringing the kid along. Mostly because - as far as any of them knew - Dick was still heavily at odds with his old man and determined not to go anywhere near Gotham these days if he could help it. Which made how exactly he got permission from Batman to take the new Robin away for the weekend a mystery to Roy. The only thing he knows for certain is that the kid is here now, small brown wings tucked in tight against his back as he stands in front of where Roy is sitting on the common room couch, trying and failing not to look like a piece of the furniture himself.

Roy’s own wings, large, expansive, and a rich burnished gold in colour, hurt just at the sight of the way Jason holds his. Normally people only tuck their wings in like that when one of them is injured, and it can’t be a comfortable position for him to hold them in for long otherwise - which would lead Roy to wonder if the kid had managed to hurt himself somehow in the couple hours since he last saw him and is embarrassed about it, if not for the fact that he’d been holding them like that all weekend except for when he was practicing with Dick in the training room.

Jason shifts uneasily, as if aware of the scrutiny he’s under. His hair and feathers are damp, like he just got out of the shower, and he’s wearing a t-shirt a couple sizes too big for him alongside a loose pair of workout shorts as sleeping clothes, rather than the familiar colours of the Robin uniform.

“I was…” Jason continues to hesitate, small square teeth pulling at his bottom lip as he gets stuck on the words he means to say for a moment. “I need to ask you for a favour, if you’re not busy or anything.”

Roy glances at the television, to the mindless action movie playing across the screen, then back to the rest of the common room, which is completely devoid of people except for him and Jason at this time of night. Nope, he’s definitely not busy, that’s for sure.

“Yeah, okay,” he agrees, though not without some concern for what this favour might be, “What’s going on? Is everything all right?”

It’s kind of cute, the way Jason squirms on the spot, a pink flush on his cheeks, his bare legs shifting restlessly while he works his way up to actually voicing his request. Even his wings get in on the act, twitching in and out of their tight hold against his back.

“It’s fine if you say no, but…” His cheeks turn even redder when he finally blurts out his request, “Could… could you help me preen my feathers?”

Roy stares at him, not sure he just heard the kid right. “... what?”

“I just…” Jason looks down at the floor, at anywhere other than Roy really. “I’m not very good at doing it by myself still, and normally I’d ask Dick. But when I went to find him he was with Starfire and they were doing… uh, y’know. That.”

“That?” Roy echoes cluelessly for a moment, before his brain catches up to what Jason’s saying. “Oh! Oh right, _that_. Right. Yeah, they do that lot.”

“No kidding.” Jason mutters under his breath, with something like resentment, before lifting his head and looking Roy in the eye. “So?”

He has pretty eyes, Roy thinks absently, now that he’s seeing them out from underneath the cover of his domino mask. And make all the jokes you want about Batman taking in another kid with blue eyes and black hair, but Jason and Dick really don’t look all that much alike otherwise. Jason has paler skin than Dick to start, and his eyes are a little closer to green rather than true blue. His hair also curls out from his scalp, rather than falling straight the way Dick’s does, and his nose is a bit more crooked, while his lips…

Roy stops that train of thought it can go any further. He must’ve drank a little more beer at this point than he first thought.

He shakes his head to clear it, then sits up properly on the couch, stretching both his arms and wings up above his head in an attempt to straighten them out until he feels his spine give a satisfying crack. What the hell, Roy decides, it won’t hurt to do the kid a favour since Dick’s apparently decided to live up to his name and bailed out on him for the rest of the night. “Okay, yeah. If that’s all you need me to do I can help you. Is in here okay, or do you want to move someplace a little more private?”

Jason shrugs, back to looking away from Roy self-consciously. His lips are pursed, while his arms remain folded across his chest. “Here’s fine. Not like anyone else is around to watch.”

“Right. Sure. Uh… just let me...” Roy glances around for a moment, trying to think of the best way to do this.

It’ll be easier if he can get Jason sat in front of him, while still keeping some room between them so that he can maneuver his wings. Struck by sudden inspiration, Roy stands up, crossing over to one of the nearby tables the team uses to eat at during mealtimes and grabbing a dining chair out from under it. He carries the chair back over to the lounge area while Jason watches him, before setting it down on the floor so it’s facing forwards towards his seat on the couch. Roy then pats the cushion of the chair in front of him, “Here, this should work. Sit down with your back to me.”

With a slow nod, and even slower steps, Jason does as he’s told, straddling the seat of the chair so that his wings and back are facing Roy and he can fold his arms across the wooden back support. As Roy watches he bends his legs backwards too, hooking his narrow ankles around the chair legs as if he’s afraid of falling off otherwise.

Cute.

Roy makes himself comfortable again on the couch in turn, though not without taking another sip of his beer first as he contemplates the set of wings on display in front of him. So far, so good, there’s just one little problem to take care of before they can proceed any further.

“You know, Jason,” he says, not unkindly, “I’m a pretty talented guy, but you’re still going to have to untuck your wings first if you actually want me to do anything with them.”

Jason starts, as if he didn’t realise he was still holding them in, then looks back over his shoulder at Roy. “Oh... right… yeah.” he takes a deep breath before slowly unfurling his wings from his back. The movement is accompanied by the soft sound of rustling feathers, and Roy’s own wings twitch again in sympathy when Jason lets out an involuntary sigh of relief at the stretch; it really must be uncomfortable for him to carry them that way all the time, just as Roy initially suspected it was earlier.

He flexes his fingers, drains the last of his beer from the can, then sets it aside. The kid still seems tense and Roy considers offering him a drink in hopes of relaxing him, before the thought of what Dick would do to him if he even suspected Roy had given his little brother alcohol takes precedent.

Yeah, really not worth it. He’s just going to have to make do.

“Hey,” Roy asks, just to be sure before they proceed, “Are you sure you’re comfortable with me doing this? You wouldn’t prefer someone else?”

Preening is an activity generally done alone, or between friends and family who trusted each other, not two people who were virtually strangers. Wings could be delicate and sensitive at the best of times, so it made sense for it to be that way. It didn’t take much to hurt them; a fact Roy was intimately familiar with as a superhero. He’s lost count of the number of times he’d lost feathers when pursuing bad guys, and could remember vividly the couple of occasions when he’d had his wing bones snapped by a particularly sadistic villain.

“I already told you, Nightwing’s _busy_ with his girlfriend.” Jason says bitterly, eyes fixed on the TV occupying the wall on the other side of the room rather than at Roy.

“Yeah, but there are other people you could ask. One of the girls -”

Jason shoots a glare back at him over his shoulder, wings starting to hitch inwards again as Roy continues to hesitate, “Look, do you want to help me or not? If you don’t, just say so. You’re not going to hurt my feelings or anything by saying no.”

That, Roy suspects, is probably a big fat lie. He’s only known him for a couple days, but he can already see that Jason has a defensive streak five miles wide. Anytime he wasn’t being shy and hiding in Nightwing’s shadow, he was usually snarking at someone and putting on a show to prove that he could keep up with the rest of them. The others may not have been able to see through the act yet, but Roy certainly could.

They’re not so dissimilar from each other in that regard.

“I’m just trying to be sure, kid. Don’t freak out. So long as you’re okay with it, I’m happy to help.” Roy assures him, before cracking his fingers and finally reaching over for one of Jason’s wings.

“I’m not - I’m not freaking out, okay? Just get on with it already. It’s late and I want to go to bed.” The kid mutters, looking away from him again. “... and don’t call me ‘kid’ either. I’m fourteen, not a baby.”

“Sorry, sorry, I know. You’re a big tough superhero, just like the rest of us.” The tips of his fingers brush across the primary flight feathers on Jason’s left wing, before he carefully takes hold of the limb and guides it to extend further out from Jason’s back so that it’s draped down across his thigh. The position makes it a lot easier on Roy to start tidying any mussed up feathers for him, and now that they’re untucked - for something other than combat training - he can’t deny that he’s also interested in finally being able to get a better look at Jason’s wings in general.

They’re small, brown, and a little disproportionate in size compared to the rest of him; something that will probably sort itself out as he grows older. His neatly formed feathers vary in shade across the length of his wings, from a relatively light autumnal tone on the undersides, to a darker, almost reddish colour on the backs, with light speckles at the tops of the shorter feathers that form the marginal coverts.

They also quiver a little under Roy’s hands as he starts to stroke his fingers through them.

 _Pretty,_ he thinks, almost absently.

But outside of that, they’re also undeniably a bit of a mess at the moment, particularly near to where they connect at the base to Jason’s shoulders, making it clear why the kid felt the need to come and ask him for his help in grooming them. He really must not be good at tidying the feathers himself, and that’s odd, since preening was one of the primary self-care skills most people were taught from childhood.

Then again… Roy thinks back to the photos Dick showed him in the papers when Jason first got adopted. When he was kicking off about the fact that Bruce hadn’t told him he was taking on another Robin; how he hadn’t even asked or bothered to check if Dick would be okay with him handing over the name and costume to another kid. Roy had listened to him rant patiently that night, nodding and making sympathetic noises at all the right moments while he studied the pictures Dick gave him. Jason had made a small, slight figure next to the intimidating height and breadth of Bruce Wayne, half-sheltered under the impressive spread of his mentor’s midnight black wings from the ever prying eyes of the cameras. But it was Jason’s own wings that Roy had looked at most in those photos while Dick complained to the left of him far more than Batman’s.

His feathers, so smooth and well maintained now, had been completely ragged back then, like they were caught in a perpetual state of moulting - probably because of the poor living conditions Jason had been forced to endure on the streets before moving into Wayne Manor. Exactly how long he’d been alone before Batman picked him up Roy didn’t know, but if it was from an early enough age then maybe it wasn’t so strange that he struggled with the basic elements of wing care after all.

If he’d never had anyone he trusted to teach him before he ended up being adopted by Batman, then how could he have ever learned?

The memory prompts Roy to be extra careful now as he starts to straighten Jason’s feathers for him, beginning with the primaries right at the end of his left wing. His fingers - always so clever with weaponry and the fletching of arrows - turn their delicate skill to the preening of feathers, and since Roy’s done this plenty of times before for other members of his team when they were tired or hurt (or covered in some alien goop that just wouldn’t come out without help) he has enough experience to knows what he’s doing when it comes to other people wings.

But this feels different to that.

Jason hasn’t come to him because he’s hurt or incapacitated, he’s come because this is a task he just can’t do himself otherwise, and for some reason he trusts Roy to give him the help he needs over any of the other members of the Teen Titan’s - even Donna, and that’s a fact that makes Roy feel better about himself than it has any right to, truth be told.

Jason doesn’t say anything more to him as he continues to work, but he does start to relax the further into the preening session Roy gets. It’s easy to tell when it happens, as the tension slowly bleeds out of his wings and down his back until the tips of the longer flight feathers on his unsupported right wing are brushing across the floor. By the time Roy’s fingers reach the scapular feathers on his left, digging into the meat of the muscle near his shoulder a little more than is strictly necessary (like he’s giving a massage rather than just helping tidy the kid’s feathers up) he even lets out a soft little sigh of contentment.

“You know,” Roy says, when things have finally been too quiet for too long and he’s feeling the urge to run his mouth a little. “You really shouldn’t keep your wings tucked in all the time the way you do. That’s gotta be uncomfortable for you.”

He feels more than hears the kid sigh again, the sound muffled by the fact that he currently has his face pressed against his arms. “I know, you’re not the first person to tell me that.”

“Got the lecture off Bats, eh?”

“Among other people.” Jason says quietly, keeping his head turned away from Roy.

“So why do you do it?” Roy carries on asking, ignoring the red flags that might have made other people back off at this point. His fingers knead deeper into Jason’s scapular feathers; he’s almost done straightening them out on this side from the disarray they’d fallen into after he took his shower.

He half-expects the kid to refuse and snap at him to mind his own business outright, which is why he’s so surprised when Jason actually deigns to give him a straight answer instead.

“Because it feels safer.”

“Safer?”

“Yeah.” Jason shivers as Roy finally finishes with his left wing and moves on to the right, guiding it to lie across his thigh the same as he did with the first. His voice is quiet, a bare shade above a whisper. “On the streets… it was easy for someone to grab you by your wings: criminals, the cops... They’d all use them to hurt you if they could. Some of them even liked to take feathers as trophies if you got on their bad side. So I got into the habit of keeping my wings folded in tight whenever I wasn’t using them. It saved my life a few times.”

Roy’s fingers still for a moment, “Can’t break it now, huh?”

“Nope.”

He nods understandingly. He knows he could say more, warn the kid about the potential damage he’s doing to himself, but Roy figures Jason’s already had enough lectures about that from other people to last him a lifetime. He doesn’t need to hear anymore from him.

“That’s a shame,” Roy chooses to say instead, as his fingers move to stroke through the middle coverts, “You have really pretty wings. It’s nice to see them spread out finally.”

All at once, the silence comes back, bleeding tension into the room and the lines of Jason’s wings. Roy can feel the way they go taut under his hands, as red steals up the back of Jason’s neck and into his cheeks.

“You don’t have lie to me to make me feel better, you know.” the kid says eventually, just when Roy has an apology ready on the tip of his tongue for whatever accidental insult it was he managed to deliver. “ I know they’re not -”

“Who said I was lying?” Roy cuts him off, mostly out of shock. Jesus, but Jason’s insecurities run deep. Deeper than he ever expected if he can’t even take a compliment about his wings without denying it. “I’m the one looking at them, aren’t I?”

Jason shakes his head, loose curls flying around his face.

“They’re just brown. Boring. They’re not like… not like Nightwing’s or…” He looks back out over his shoulder at Roy - at what’s behind Roy’s shoulders, cheeks still red as he sucks on his teeth and then bites down on his bottom lip. “They’re nothing special, okay. I know they’re not.”

“C’mon,” Roy says, disbelieving, wings rising up in time with his eyebrows to express that emotion more clearly, “You don’t really believe that, do you?”

Jason tucks his wings in tighter to his body in response, looking down at the ground; which says everything really.

Christ, Roy really doesn’t feel qualified to be the one having this talk with him, but unfortunately he’s the only other person around right now, since Dick - whose responsibility this really should be - abandoned him to make a booty call. Stupid Dick, whose dark blue and black banded wings were beautiful enough to give anyone an inferiority complex, apparently.

He’s definitely going to need another beer after this.

“Okay, turn around.”

“What?”

“You heard me, kid. Turn around.” Roy says impatiently, making little twirling motions in the air with his index finger. “I’m only going to say this once, and I want to say it to your face, not your back.”

Jason gives him a quizzical look, surprised enough by the request that he doesn’t even call Roy out on calling him a kid again. But eventually he does as he’s told, getting up from the chair and then turning round so that he’s sitting in it normally this time.

The blush is still there in the tops of his cheeks when their eyes meet, and Roy has to take a moment to organise his thoughts before he goes ahead with what he wants to say.

“All right, so your wings aren’t like Dick’s. So what? Not many peoples are, and you know what? That’s a massive pain in the ass for him. Unusual colours like his make it harder to have a secret identity with, you must have realised that by now. In our profession you’re actually pretty lucky to have your wings be the colour they are.”

“I -”

“And secondly, just because they’re brown doesn’t mean they’re boring.” Roy carries on, before Jason can voice any objections, reaching over and poking his finger against the visible arch of his wing over his right shoulder. “Brown’s a gorgeous colour all on its own, whatever shade it is. You don’t see brown leaves in autumn and go, ‘ugh gross’, do you? Of course not, because they’re still pretty to look at.” He lets himself smile, and his hand goes from poking to gently brushing over Jason’s alula, “Just like your wings. You may not see it, but I do. They’re beautiful. Plus, they actually look like a real robin’s, which isn’t something Dick could ever say, and that’s pretty damn cool, you’ve got to admit. So trust me, Jaybird, you’ve have nothing to worry about in the wing department.”

Across from him Jason’s eyes are wide with shock, his lips slightly parted. He doesn’t even look like he’s breathing, which starts to get somewhat disconcerting after the first thirty seconds have passed by since Roy stopped talking.

“Um… Jason?” Roy says, a little uncertainly. “You okay?”

“Roy…” The flush has returned full force to Jason’s cheeks. Roy watches his throat work as he swallows, while his fingers dig into the cotton fabric of the shorts he’s wearing. “You…”

“Yeah?”

“Was autumn leaves really the best thing you could come up with?”

Roy snorts, grinning at the same time as he shrugs his shoulders. “C'mon, give me a break. You put me on the spot, I had to improvise. Wasn't that bad, was it?”

"No, not... not that bad." Jason stands up then, curling his bare toes against the carpeted floor. Under Roy’s watch he sets his shoulders and his jaw, like he’s about to make a report - or gathering his courage. Somehow his face has gone even redder. “Hey, um, I... thank you.”

“Sure thing, kid, you know -”

He’s really not prepared for it when Jason suddenly bends down, fingers latching onto his shoulders as his mouth presses against Roy's in a kiss that’s soft and sweet, more just a gentle touching of their lips than anything. Jason’s eyes are closed, the black sweep of his eyelashes against his cheeks so close that they’re nothing more than a dark smudge in Roy’s vision, and he flails at the air a little until he ends up catching the kid’s waist in both hands.

Kissing back is a reflex, that’s what he tells himself to explain the next few moments. Habit. Jason tastes like cigarettes when Roy parts his lips to brush his tongue over the soft corners of his mouth - which opens up a whole new potential line of questioning concerning the kid’s bad habits that he doesn’t give a shit about asking right now. He’s warm too when Roy pulls him closer, shivering in his arms as he sweeps his own wings forwards to encircle him, and -

\- and he’s _fourteen_. And Dick’s kid brother. _Dick_ , who will literally murder him if he finds out about any of this, regardless of any good intentions Roy had and the fact that the kid kissed him first.

Roy lets go of Jason the moment that realisation hits him, and as soon as he does Jason’s pulling back as well, jumping away from Roy as if he’s been burnt. He’s flushed all over now, not just in his face, and looks more than a little in shock at his own daring. As Roy watches, Jason reaches up and touches his lips with his fingers as his eyes go wide. “I… shit. I didn’t...”

“Jason...” Roy starts to say carefully.

He’s ready to have the most awkward conversation of his life in telling Jason why they can’t do that again, but then he’s saved from having to utter even a single word when Jason suddenly turns around and darts out of the room without another word and his wings trailing out openly behind him; leaving Roy with exactly _zero_ opportunity to explain anything.

His first instinct is to chase after Jason in hopes of getting him to agree to sharing a vow of silence about this whole evening for now and the rest of eternity, but on second thought Roy just lets himself collapse back down on the couch instead, with his face firmly planted in his hands and the burnished gold of his wings wrapped in around his own shoulders.

“Shit,” he mutters, “Shit, shit, shit.”

He’s going to be so dead in the morning.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So remember back when I first uploaded this and said there would be more to the story? Yeah, I know, it was a while ago, but inspiration struck recently, so here you all are finally. I hope it was worth the wait. XD Also fyi, this is a 'verse where Roy and Kori's relationship never went beyond casual sex, so we can have our JayRoy.
> 
> Will there be more wing-verse stuff after this? Perhaps. I'd dearly love to do more with Dick in this someday.

On the day Dick comes back from Gotham with a bruise on his face and a small varnished wooden box in his hand, Roy knows that what the computer files said about Jason is true.

The kid is dead. His life snuffed out at just age fifteen, and from that moment on the day to day reality of their lives — the lives of the entire superhero community — becomes that much darker.

Dick’s grief, explosive at first, eventually turns into a quieter thing; kept hidden behind locked doors for the most part. Kori is his mainstay, as she should be. The one who holds him up when nothing else can. But they all take their turn at playing counselor. Even Roy, who deals with the situation in the best way he knows how: supplying Dick with both alcohol and an open ear to pour his sorrow into when he needs it.

“It’s my fault, I should have been there for him.” Dick says dully on one such evening, staring down into the bottom of his glass. It’s not the first time he’s said it, but the words never get any less painful to hear. “I should have done more, trained him. He wasn’t like me. He needed…”

“It’s not your fault, Dick.” Roy says dutifully, though he knows it won’t do any good.

Right on cue, Dick says, “It doesn’t feel that way. He needed someone, needed… and now Bruce is locking every piece of him he can find away. It’s like he’s trying to pretend Jason never existed at all.”

Roy shakes his head at the news, “No one who met him could forget that kid. No one.”

Dick actually smiles a little. “He really did know how to make an impression, huh?”

 _You don’t know the half of it._ Roy thinks, but instead of voicing the thought behind that, says, “Remember that argument he had with Beast Boy when he fed him tofu at breakfast?”

Dick actually laughs. “‘This shit tastes like regurgitated cardboard.’ Gar was so offended.” the moment of levity is short-lived however, as his wings — gorgeous, shimmering black and blue — slump down across the bed behind him. “I miss him, Roy. I really do. I didn’t know him as well as I should have, but...”

“Yeah,.” Roy admits softly, “Me too.”

He looks down at the glass in his hand before tossing back the rest of his drink. Then reaches over with an unsteady hand to pour them.both another.

An hour later, when Dick’s finally fallen asleep, Roy — always better at handling his alcohol out of the pair of them — stands up from the bed and crosses over to the tall dresser standing against the wall in one corner of the room. Carefully, and as quietly as he can manage, he reaches out to slide open the top drawer and pull out the newest of the three wooden cases contained within.

It’s slim, and a little shorter compared to the others. Roughly the size of a letter opener, though its contents are far from being something so mundane. Were they that normal, Roy definitely wouldn’t feel such trepidation on opening it.

Carefully, he runs his thumb over the brass catch on the front of the box before lifting the latch and sliding open the lid. Bracing himself to see what’s contained within.

The tradition of preserving the feathers of dead loved ones had always seemed like a morbid one to him. It’s not something the Navajo, his adopted tribe, practice. The Wayne’s, however (and by extension the last flying Grayson), are an old fashioned family in the Western sense. And this time, looking at the slender brown feather carefully pressed between two glass plates inside the box, Roy can hardly find it in himself to argue against their choices.

He’s holding one of the last physical reminders of Jason Todd left in the world in his hands, and as he stares at it, Roy feels all the words he’s never been able to say to Dick since that weekend Jason came to stay at the tower sit up and knock against the backs of his teeth, accompanied by the too vivid memory of the boy who’d inspired them.

_He kissed me once. I never told you. He kissed me and I kissed him back. His mouth tasted like cigarettes. And if he’d been older…_

If Jason had been older, Roy doesn’t think he’d have been able to stop himself at all. Jason had been shy and sweet beneath the hard outer shell he wore to protect himself against the world; something which tugged at Roy’s heart strings and fragile self-control in the worst way.

He really hadn’t deserved to die the way he did.

A sad smile twists his lips as Roy carefully slides the lid of the box closed again and places it back where he found it, making sure to arrange everything as perfectly as he can so Dick will never know what he did. Then he returns to his friend, carefully covering Dick with a blanket and making sure he’s not sleeping on his wings in any painful way before lying down on his stomach on the bed next to him with his own wings draped across his back.

Some things are better off staying secret.

 

*

 

Six years later, Roy lets himself fall down onto the sandy beach, flat on his stomach and with his wings spread wide, slowly warming underneath the sun’s rays. Around him, he can hear the sound of the waves hitting the shore of the island, gulls and the wind in the trees. Voices also, one female, light and musical; the other male, deep and with a noticeable smoker’s rasp.

Roy can’t make out the individual words they’re saying from this distance, but he lets himself take comfort in their familiarity while he continues to rest his aching body on the shore. After being stuck in the tight confines of their spaceship for the last twenty-four hours, it feels good to simply be outside. Never again will he dismiss the joys of fresh air and the great outdoors.

Eventually, the voices stop and separate. The sand shifts under a pair of heavy boots as one of the speakers walks over to stand beside him.

“You better not be dead there, Harper.”

Roy cracks one eye open. “How about mostly dead?”

“Well, mostly dead is still slightly alive, so that’s all right.” Jason snorts, then sits down next to him, folding his wings in against his back so they don’t block the sun’s rays. “Considering all the effort it took to drag you out of that alien mud pit you fell into on Kelbriar, I’d be pretty pissed off if you croaked now.”

“That makes two of us.”

Jason grunts. As Roy watches, he pulls out a cigarette from his pocket and lights it up. “You’re a real mess, you know that, Roy?”

“That’s what all my therapists keep telling me.” he jokes in turn, except that the words fall instantly flat the moment they leave his mouth, smacking into the air with all the grace of a dead bird hitting a window pane.

Roy swallows hard afterwards, but perhaps out of kindness, Jason doesn’t call him on it. “I was talking about your wings, dumbass. They’re still bright fucking green from that stuff.”

“Hey, green and gold is a good combination.” he defends, then sighs, “But yeah, I know. I need to upgrade the ship to include a shower before we go anywhere in space again. I’m pretty sure all my feathers are permanently glued together now.”

Not to mention, they smell. Roy knows that when Jason calls the bog he fell into a mud pit, he’s making an effort to be nice about it. The reality was really so much worse.

There’s a long pause between the end of that sentence and what Jason says next.

“You know, I could…” he hesitates, “I could help you with them. If you want.”

Roy lifts his head back up from the ground, sand crusting one side of his face as he looks over at him. “What?”

“I could…” Jason takes a fierce drag from his cigarette before repeating the offer. “I could help you. Clean up your wings, I mean. If you need it.”

Roy feels the first stirrings of a forbidden memory at the back of his mind. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. Kori took off to get us some food since the fridge is empty, so...”

“Sure, Jaybird.” He agrees, nodding slowly, despite the clamouring of those warning bells. “I’d like that.”

“Okay.” Jason mutters, before finishing up his cigarette. “Come on, then.”

The shower in the main bathroom inside the beach house is nothing short of luxurious. Huge, and easily big enough to accompany two people at once, wings and all. Roy should know, because he built it himself with those specifications in mind (though he has yet to make use of it that way yet with anyone but Kori, who — despite her ability to fly — is severely lacking in the wings department). It has settings for both water and air. High shelves stocked with a variety of shampoos and conditioners. Everything anyone could ever need for proper wing care, especially with the beach right outside for when you wanted a sand bath.

Jason has never said anything outright about it to him, but Roy is pretty sure he appreciates it too.

While they wait for the water to heat up, Roy can’t help but sneak a wondering glance at the former boy wonder standing beside him. The one time he’d met Jason before he died, he had been a short, scrawny, whip of a kid, all knobbly knees and hard edges, with a set of wings that had been a little on the small side when compared to the relative height of the rest of his body.

Not so now. Now, Jason is even taller than Roy, though not by much. Broad shouldered and muscular; he’d filled out well in the years he was gone, given a helpful boost Roy is sure by the dunk he’d taken in Ra’s al Ghul’s Lazarus Pit, and his wings are no exception to that rule. They’re no longer small, but long and sleek, with feathers that range in colour from rich brown to deep russet red at their tips. More like those of a hawk than a robin.

You’d think, six months after Jason and Kori first burst into Roy’s cell in Quarac to save him from a premature death of his own, he’d have gotten used to the sight of him as an adult by now. But some days (most days if he’s being honest with himself) Roy still can’t help being caught repeatedly off-guard at the differences between the Jason he knew then and the Jason he knows now.

“Roy?”

“Huh?”

He blinks, and finds Jason giving him a strange look across the top of his folded arms. “Water’s ready. You still want me to help you or what?”

“Yeah. Yeah sorry ,Jaybird. Just got a little distracted.” he shakes his head to clear it before reaching back between his shoulders to undo the rear buttons of his vest, unhooking them and allowing the material to fall open around his wings. From there, it’s a simple matter to unzip the front and slide the whole thing off.

Roy sighs as the lingering soreness in his muscles from their fight yesterday makes its presence known, and when he looks over at Jason, it’s to find him with his eyes curiously averted to another corner of the bathroom.

“So how we doing this?” he asks him, forcing a smile back on his face, “You climbing in with me, or…?”

“Get you wings wet. Then I’ll work the shampoo in for you so you can rinse that shit off.”

Roy sucks his teeth, then nods. “Might take more than one go. This stuff is gross.”

“Just get on with it, Harper.”

Back to last name basis. Yep, he thinks, Jason definitely isn’t as comfortable with this as he initially made himself out to be.

Roy strips off the rest of his clothing and steps in under the spray, sighing in deep relief the moment the water hits him. Though they focused on his wings, the truth is there’s still mud lingering on his skin and in his hair too, but those parts at least are easier to take care of himself. Roy soaps his body down as quickly and efficiently as he can, despite his temptation to linger, then washes the soap back off before stepping back out of the shower.

Immediately, a towel comes flying at his face.

“Put that on.” Jason says curtly.

“You’re so bossy.” Roy teases him, though still does as he’s told. He wraps the towel around his waist, then perches on the stool Jason must have magicked in here from the kitchen while he was under the water. “Boss man, Jay.”

He thinks he sees the barest hint of a smile at the edge of Jason’s lips before he’s rolling his eyes at him. “Someone has to be to get you to listen.”

“Yeah, Kori.”

This time Jason’s smile is more obvious, the banter easing him back into a more comfortable frame of mind. “I’m not arguing that.”

“No one with any sense of self-preservation does.”

“Hm.” Crossing over to the shelf next to the shower, Jason picks out the heavy bottle of feather shampoo. He gives it a small shake as he walks back over to stand behind Roy, whose bedraggled feathers are now releasing a steady drip of water onto the tiled floor. “Hope there’s enough in here,” he says, wrinkling his nose just before he steps out of Roy’s line of sight. “You smell like ass.”

“And now with the insults. You try falling into an alien bog and see how you come out smelling. It won’t be like roses, trust me.” Roy hears the flick of the bottle cap opening up behind him, but then, curiously, nothing else immediately follows. “Uh, Jaybird? You okay back there?”

“Yeah.” Jason replies, sounding distracted. Then he clears his throat, “Yeah, I just… trying to think where to…”

“Probably best at the base.” Roy says helpfully, viscerally reminded again of the sight of fluffy, dishevelled brown feathers in front of him. Of a kid, who barely knew how to preen himself. “That’s the part I can’t reach. If you can get those feathers, I can do the ends myself.”

“Yeah.” Jason says again. His voice, oddly, is now pitched a little higher than before. “Yeah, okay.”

It still takes a few seconds for Jason to touch him, but finally, with Roy’s directions in mind, he begins.

The first touch of hands to the base of Roy’s right wing is tentative, uncertain. Too light really, to actually be working the shampoo deep enough to reach the base of his feathers, but Roy is patient, sitting quiet and still as Jason figures his way around them, until eventually the press of his fingers becomes firmer and more confident.

Maybe too firm, to be honest, as he’s forced to suppress a wince when Jason accidentally tugs on a couple of his feathers.

“Sorry,” Jason mutters, picking up on his discomfort regardless. “I’m not… I’ve never actually done this for anyone else before.”

“Hey, it’s okay. I appreciate it.” Roy assures him. “You’re doing fine.”

“If you’d rather wait for Kori to get back—”

Roy twists in his seat, turning his head so that he can actually see Jason behind him. “I said it’s fine, Jay.” He catches his eyes with his own and holds them, before reaching back to take hold of one soap-lathered wrist and giving it a reassuring squeeze. The uncertainty on Jason’s face makes him look so much younger. “You’re good, keep going.”

Jason draws in a deep breath, then blows it out. Finally he nods, “Yeah, yeah okay. Just… turn back around, would ya. And let me know if I fuck anything up.”

“You won’t fuck up.” Roy says, but turns around anyway, leaning forward again and baring the entire expanse of his back and wings to Jason. It’s a show of trust, as much as anything can be. More reassurance than words could ever provide.

For a while, they continue on in silence. Roy bows his head and closes his eyes as Jason’s hands work deeper into his feathers, a little cautious again in their attempt to be gentle and not hurt him, at the same time as actually working hard enough to get the muck out. He has big hands, Roy thinks, in the sort of curious realisation he knows he should have had before now. He’s seen them enough times, punching, hitting, shooting; loading bullets into guns with all the speed of a sheriff in an old west movie. But still, it’s a little different to feel those hands, so adept at violence, touching him in such a gentle manner.

Maybe it’s that, or his exhaustion, or just his own inability to keep from saying the dumbest shit sometimes, but the next time Roy opens his mouth, Jason has his hands pressing up under the arch close to his shoulder, and that’s when the forbidden words come out.

“Do you remember when I did this for you?”

In all the months since they’ve worked together on this team, Roy’s never brought it up. Not once. Neither has Jason. In fact, he had from the beginning acted as if the day they met in Quarac was the first time he and Roy had ever laid eyes on each other in person. As if it was the first time they’d spoken, man to man.

The behaviour had led Roy to think that maybe he’d forgotten. If maybe everything Jason has been through — death, coming back, the Pit — had somehow wiped the memory of that solitary weekend with the Titans from his mind. He’s known plenty of poorer excuses for amnesia between friends in his time.

But feeling the way Jason’s hands freeze against his wing, Roy realises the real answer is truth of a different kind.

He half-expects Jason to pull away, storm off out of the bathroom and close up, the way he usually does when Roy comes too close to pressing against something he shouldn’t (the past or his feelings towards his family) but this time he doesn’t. This time, Jason keeps his hands exactly where they are, and doesn’t move a muscle.

“That was a long time ago, Roy.” he says, quietly.

Everything about Jason’s tone of voice, his short, to the point reply, says ‘leave it’, but Roy’s never been very good at heeding turn signals.

“Six years,” Roy says, “Not that long.”

Jason‘s fingers twitch against his feathers, and Roy swears he hears him swallow. “I was just a kid back then, figured you’d have forgotten.”

Roy shakes his head. His hair sticks to the back of his neck where it’s still wet. “Forget you and your cute little robin wings? No way.”

“My… Jesus, Roy.”

“What?” Roy tries to turn his head again to get another look at him. He can’t help the grin that spreads across his face. “Don’t tell me you didn’t love that.”

Jason’s face is flushed as he rather hastily withdraws his hands from Roy’s feathers. “I was a kid. A dumb kid. It was stupid, the whole—”

“I didn’t think it was stupid.”

He says it quietly, but it still shuts Jason up for a moment. There’s a wariness in the way he holds himself that doesn’t belong on a man as big as Jason is now. As Roy watches, he draws his wings in tight to his back, folding them down in that same painful way he did as a teenager. “Can we not talk about this?”

“Why?” Roy asks.

“I just don’t… I don’t want to, all right?”

“Is it because of the kiss?”

“Do you have any setting that doesn’t involve putting your foot in your mouth?” Jason snaps at him then, arms folding across his chest and smearing muddied soap across his sleeves and the chest armour he’s still wearing. “I said I don’t want to talk about it.”

Roy opens his mouth. Shuts it. He’s keenly aware of the situation then. Him sitting here half-naked, wrapped only in a towel while Jason soaps his wings. Probably not the ideal time to bring that part of the memory back up, but now he’s started, he just can’t stop.

“That was cute too. The kiss, I mean.”

Jason doesn’t look at him. He keeps his eyes tracked on one of the far corners of the bathroom. “You didn’t seem to think so at the time.”

Roy smiles again, “Jaybird, at the time you were fourteen. It didn’t matter what else I thought back then, mostly I was thinking about all the ways in which Dick would kill me for kissing you back.”

“Golden boy? Please.”

“Okay, maybe not killed,” Roy amends, “Plucked like a chicken, though. Definitely.”

Jason’s wings twitch in their tight hold. A sign of suppressed mirth as much as the forcibly still press of his mouth is. He shakes his head, “You’re his best friend, Roy. I’m just…”

“His little brother?”

“You say that like it means something.”

“It does.” Roy replies, flicking one wing as an excess of shampoo lather drips off it onto the floor. “You mean something to him, Jay.”

The discomfort grows deeper for a moment. Predictably, Jason chooses to react to Roy’s small push at family reconciliation by ignoring it altogether. “I shouldn’t have kissed you.”

To that, Roy doesn’t know what else to say other than, “Why did you kiss me?”

Jason groans, reaching up to rake his fingers back through his hair before looking at his hand in distaste when he remembers what’s on it. Roy tries not to smirk at the sight of green much now smeared over the white streak. “I don’t know. It… just seemed like a good idea at the time, I guess.”

“Jason...”

“You were nice to me, all right?” he confesses, “No one else had ever said anything like that to me before, and you were just… you were nice. And...”

“And?” Roy pushes him, undeniably eager to hear what else he has to say.

Jason glares at him. “I thought we were here to clean your wings, not interrogate me.”

This time Roy grins, “C’mon, Jaybird. You can’t just leave it there, what else?”

“Can and will. Last chance, Roy, sit back round and let me finish this or I’m out.”

“Fine, fine.” Roy rolls his eyes as he turns back round.

They make it another minute before, once again, Roy’s mouth opens up and says something traitorous.

“I still think you’re damn cute, though. Just so you know. Robin wings and all.”

He doesn’t know exactly where the words come from. Maybe he’s been thinking them all along, ever since Jason walked back into his life by saving it, cocksure grin on his face and gun in hand. Or maybe it’s a realisation that’s crept up on him slowly, after months of working together through situations both good and bad.

Either way, the moment they leave his mouth, Roy knows he means he means them wholeheartedly.

And the sincerity must ring through in his voice, because Jason makes an odd choking sound behind him. “What if I hadn’t been fourteen?”

When Roy looks round, it’s to find Jason looking horrified, as if he can’t believe what he just said. It’s too late to retract it now though. The question hangs there, in the air between them, like a bomb ready to go off. “What?”

“What if…” He takes a deep breath, “What if I hadn’t been fourteen when I kissed you? You said...”

 _Then Dick still would have killed me, probably._ Roy almost jokes, but doesn’t say. Proving that sometimes he does know when to keep his mouth shut.

Standing up from the stool, he turns to face Jason, who makes a valiant effort to keep his eyes focused on Roy’s face rather than any other part of his body the closer he gets. “You asking what I’d do if you kissed me now?”

Jason’s lips are pressed into the kind of hard line that looks like it’d fracture the mouths of anyone he tried to kiss with them. “What if I am?”

Now, Roy doesn’t hesitate, “I’d say why don’t you try it, and find out.”

This close, he can’t miss the way Jason swallows, the way his eyes try to flick downwards underneath the thick sweep of his eyelashes before remembering Roy’s state of undress and bouncing back up again. It’s cute. Jason’s cute, and... No, he amends, not just cute. _Hot_. Now that he’s grown up, gaining height, muscle, and experience in the process.

“Kori—”

“Jay,” he says softly, “Come on.”

Roy can see the desire in Jason now that he’s looking for it, held back behind a shield of caution, and he understands that, he does. The need to protect yourself against rejection and disappointment, but he’s not sure how much clearer he can be about what he wants here. And if Jason doesn’t hurry up and act on it soon, Roy’s pretty sure he _will._

“Yeah.” Jason says eventually, “Yeah, I... okay.”

It isn’t like when Jason was fourteen. For one thing, Roy knows the kiss is coming. For another, he has to tilt his head up to meet it even though they’re both standing this time. And while Jason still kisses hesitantly, there’s more knowledge of what he’s doing behind it, Roy can feel it. He kisses like a man now, not an inexperienced boy.

Roy likes that. He likes it a lot. The same way that he likes how his mouth is still soft and warm, beckoning Roy to move closer.

Reaching up, he sinks his hands into Jason’s hair, tilting his head to the side to make the angle better and stopping him from withdrawing immediately after the first press of their lips. A flick of his tongue makes Jason gasp, and that slight partition of his lips afterwards is all the invitation Roy needs to take the kiss further; pressing his tongue between Jason’s teeth in a broad and hungry sweep that takes both their breath away.

By the time they do actually part, he’s smiling, and Jason is more than a little flushed.

“You still taste like cigarettes.” Roy tells him, feeling Jason’s hands where they’ve landed on his waist. His fingers almost dip beneath the line of the towel before self-consciously sliding upwards to the relatively safer (though no less sensitive) area of his back where Roy’s wings join his body.

Jason snorts, though also looks shyly pleased. “You see me smoke every day, are you really surprised?”

“Not as much as I was before.”

Before Jason can work up a response to that, Roy kisses him again, stepping forwards at the same time and pressing their bodies together. His wings, still dripping water and shampoo, raise up and sweep inwards, instinctively trying to cocoon Jason in as his back hits the wall of the bathroom.

“Roy.” Jason gasps, when he lowers his head down to kiss his neck. “You…”

“You still tuck your wings down when you’re nervous, Jaybird.” Roy smiles against his skin, before gently nipping at his throat. “Bad habit. Should really stop that.”

To demonstrate his point, he drags his fingers down out of Jason’s hair, reaching around him to brush the tops of his feathers instead.

“Fuck you.” Jason shivers, blushing even more deeply at the intimate touch, “Are you… this, are you serious about…?”

Roy pulls back just far enough to look at him. “Want me to stop?”

Judging by the expression on Jason’s face, he very much doesn’t, “Just tell me.”

Roy’s gaze softens as he strokes his fingers through Jason’s hair. “Yeah, Jaybird. I am. I’m really fucking serious. About you. About kissing you, and whatever else comes after it. So long as you want that too. Do you?”

Jason swallows thickly. Roy can see him thinking about it, weighing pros and cons in his head. In that, he’s just like any other Bat, always thinking too much before taking what he wants.

“Yeah,” he says finally, “Yeah, I do.”

“Good.” Roy smiles. But this time when he goes in for the kiss, Jason turns his head away, wrinkling his nose.

“You still need to rinse off.”

Oh, right. “You could help me with that.”

“I thought I already was helping you.” Jason replies. His hands actually brush the bases of Roy’s wings now, and Roy has to bite his lip. The towel really isn’t going to be hiding anything soon if they carry on like this.

“So help me a little more.” Roy says, before kissing him and taking his hand to lead Jason towards the shower.

Before he can reach it though, Jason stops, forcing Roy to stop with him. “Roy…”

“Yeah, Jaybird?”

“That other thing you wanted to know, the other reason I kissed you back then…”

“Yeah?”

Jason clenches his teeth together, and Roy would tell him to stop, that he doesn’t have to tell him, except he really wants to know. “I had a… crush on you. Moment I walked in the door. That’s why…” he clears his throat, “That’s why I asked you to help preen my feathers that night, instead of someone else.”

Fuck the shower. Roy can’t resist him then. He turns back, crowding in close to Jason to mash their mouths together in a kiss that is made up of far more enthusiasm than skill, and has his wings fluttering behind him. “And now?”

Jason gives him an unimpressed look once he’s recovered, “What do you think?”

Roy smiles, before reaching up to brush his hand across Jason’s cheek. “I think I’m really glad you kissed me again, Jay.”

Jason expression softens, and finally his wings start to loosen out from their rigid position against his back.

“Yeah, me too.”

**Author's Note:**

> Luckily for Roy, Dick later turns out not to be secretly psychic and Jason never tells another soul what happened, so he lives to see another day XD
> 
> Find me on [tumblr!](http://firefrightfic.tumblr.com/)


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